Oct. 4, 2013

Kate Lamont left Indy to pursue a music career in San Francisco.

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Kate Lamont has a degree in architecture and a job in communications consulting, but her passion is music.

She spent more than a decade writing songs and singing in clubs all over Indianapolis. The Vogue. Jazz Kitchen. The Melody Inn. White Rabbit. On a good night, her band would bring in 300 people. On a bad night, 150. But it was hard to make money. Hard to book shows. Hard to bring in new fans week after week. So when she got a job offer in California, she left — taking her talent and her experience with her.

“It was a proving ground,” Kate, 36, says of Indianapolis. “It’s actually possible to be a full-time musician in the Bay Area.”

It’s stories like this that give hiring managers and economic development types heartburn. Another Hoosier-bred, college-educated, creative mind lost to another state.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Sure, Indianapolis isn’t Austin or Nashville, Tenn. Our schtick isn’t music.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t have a thriving local music scene. Indianapolis should be a place where someone can choose to pursue a career as a professional musician -- and not just with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

Why should people like Kate have to move across the country to do that?

That’s the question driving The Music Council, a new initiative with members from organizations ranging from the Indy Chamber, Girls Rock Indy and Butler University to Joyful Noise Recordings, and the tech firms SmallBox and Apparatus.

The council, which had its first meeting Thursday, is an offshoot of the Indy Music Project, which brought together 46 homegrown bands to play during Super Bowl week in 2012. Since then, the mission has expanded into a coordinated effort to build a business infrastructure around local music. The council’s goals are to help local musicians succeed as well as to create opportunities for economic development and make Indianapolis more attractive to young professionals.

“We recognized that the music ecosystem didn’t have the same structure or support as the arts or tech scene. It’s more siloed,” said Jeb Banner, a member of the council and CEO of tech firm SmallBox. “It’s how do we work together?”

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If all of this sounds too ambitious, consider this: It wasn’t long ago that most people in Indianapolis ate at chain restaurants when they went out for a meal. Don Pablo’s was what passed for Mexican fare and P.F. Chang’s for Chinese food. If you didn’t plan on visiting a steakhouse, it was hard to find places for fine dining here. Today, though, we have all kinds of popular local joints, from food trucks to dimly lighted posh restaurants. And we have a cast of local celebrity chefs and owners, including Neal Brown of The Libertine and Martha Hoover of Patachou.

Same with beer. Not long ago, it was all about grabbing a Budweiser, or if you were picky, a Guinness. That was before Sun King, Flat 12, Fountain Square Brewing, Black Acre and a host of other craft breweries came along. The enterprising founders of these companies have turned Hoosiers into beer connoisseurs.

Today, Indianapolis has a thriving food culture. Indianapolis has a growing beer culture. And we can have a vibrant music culture.

Accomplishing that, however, will require fixing some essential links in the system.

Kate has thoughts on how to do that.

“My personal experience was that everybody was young,” she said. “Everyone was just practicing being a manager or practicing being a booking agent.” Finding a competent agent, publicist or music-video producer often requires looking to other states. And those with experience here aren’t exactly volunteering to show newbies the ropes.

“Wouldn’t it be great if Indy was a one-stop shop for a music economy?” asked John Beeler, a member of the council and a project manager for Asthmatic Kitty Records “Once we go kind of plumbing the depths, I think we’ll find a pretty good foundation. It just needs some connecting.”

Beyond that, there just aren’t a lot of venues where bands that play original music are welcome seven nights a week. This makes artists dependent on their friends to be fans, but that can get old, fast.

One exception to this is jazz. And there’s a reason for that. Not only do we have a deep jazz history with the likes of Wes Montgomery and Freddie Hubbard, but we also have long-running jazz clubs here such as the Chatterbox and the Jazz Kitchen. You can be a professional jazz musician in Indianapolis, although you still might have to play at a few weddings to make ends meet.

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But this brings up grander possibilities. Banner wants to use the jazz community as a model. What if Indianapolis had a music district, where people could go to see local bands three or four nights a week, every week? Perhaps in Fountain Square, home to Radio Radio, White Rabbit, the Cataracts Music Festival and Tonic Ball.

A music district could change the thinking from, “I’m going to see Band X at Club Z tonight” to, “I’m going to Fountain Square to hear some music.”

It’s what most people think when they head to Slippery Noodle or Chatterbox for a night of blues or jazz. And now, it’s also what people think when they leave their Downtown offices for lunch, knowing they will probably run across a food truck with tempting fare. Which food truck? It no longer matters.

With a little direction, we can build the same infrastructure for up-and-coming musicians that we did for up-and-coming chefs and brewmasters. If The Music Council is successful, in a few years, local music could be so integrated into our community that we won’t remember what life was like without it.

“I hesitate to say there’s more talent out here (in the Bay Area) because I’m certain that there’s no lack of talent in Indy. In fact, there’s an overabundance of talent.” Lamont said. “There’s just a lack of infrastructure and services for artists.”

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